Saipan Sawyers ready to aid in recovery

The newly trained and equipped Saipan Sawyers pose for a photo after their recognition ceremony last Wednesday at the Hyatt Regency Saipan. (Kimberly A. Bautista)

The newly created Saipan Sawyers, through the Marianas Young Professionals, has completed their training and are ready to aid the CNMI community in their ongoing debris clearing needs.

MyPros executive director G Van Gils officially welcomed last Wednesday the Saipan Sawyers, which is the newest arm of the non-profit.

The Saipan Sawyers consist of eight professionally trained chainsaw practitioners who are equipped to help those who need to clear storm-damaged trees. The eight sawyers are Steven Beyer, Ajani Burrell, Micah Page, Mikiotti Evangelista, Jerrid Igisaiar, C.J. Jensen, Tushar Abdullah, and Van Gils himself.

“We have organized volunteers, raised money, and distributed that money through relief efforts. One of the relief efforts we saw a need for is to clear large trees which are storm damaged. Nobody in the Marianas has the training and the equipment to remove storm-damaged trees from private property. The various organizations may cover public roads or public property but for everyone that’s just suffering in their recovery, who can help them? The MyPros is a community non-profit organization and we’re an educationally focused non-profit so we saw an opportunity to meet a community need by providing organized education programming,” he said.

“MyPros is professional. We went to the very best organizations, we went to the very best instructors, and bought the very best equipment because this is the most dangerous profession in the world and we will not be having our people getting hurt if we can help,” he added.

MyPros hired David Birdsall, Soren Erikson Game of Logging’s Northeast Woodland Training chainsaw instructor. Birdsall is sponsored by Husqvarna Chainsaws and was trained personally by innovator of the chainsaw industry, Soren Erikson.

Birdsall has been training the Saipan Sawyers for about three days and said that they have been an incredible bunch to work with.

“They were amazing, very dedicated, very professional. I think it’s a testimony to them being teachers…they’re eager to learn, they paid attention, they did very well so I feel very confident…these guys were solid and they’re going to be very good sawyers,” Birdsall said.

In the immediate aftermath of Super Typhoon Yutu, MyPros has been providing food and water to the community, and are now aiding in the cleanup of typhoon debris.

“Now, we are passed our immediate recovery. The MyPros committed to our community a couple of things, we committed to raise $100,000 and we have done so. We committed to spend $100,000 within the 90 days of the typhoon’s impact and we’ve spent more than we raised…meeting our commitment to the community. Part of that was just disposables…we’re transitioning to resilience out of recovery and into typhoon preparedness and resilience and that is why MyPros has focused on training so that we continue large tree debris removal not just for this storm but for every storm and we want to build capacity of our local people. We invested in training and equipment and now we’ve trained our people so they can help our people and themselves and help their neighbors.

The Saipan Sawyers have already begun using their newfound skills by clearing private properties and roads.

“We hope that people that operate chainsaws in the CNMI will get trained, and use proper safety equipment because this is a very dangerous job that required training and equipment and people should not just whip out their chainsaws and try to clear debris. It’s a very dangerous pastime and we don’t want to see our people injured. Let’s let professionals with professional training handle these tasks and let’s increase the number of trained people. We hope to conduct future training for fire departments, the National Guard, and various other non-profit and government agencies that are doing cleanup work, we want to train them and equip them properly that’s the goal,” said Van Gil.